Obama Speaks on Financial Crisis Anniversary

On Monday afternoon, President Barack Obama gave a speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis. Watch the highlights.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... the goal this week ... at the financial crisis rocked Wall Street ... it's an ... economy already in a recession into a tailspin ... it's hard sometimes to remember ... everything that happened ... during those ... last months but ... it's a matter ... of loaf brightening few days and weeks ... some largest investment banks in the world fails ... stock markets plunged ... banks stop lending to families and small businesses ... our auto industry ... the heartbeat of America manufacturing ... was flat lining ... but some I took office ... the economy was shrinking ... by the annual rate of more than eight percent ... our businesses were shedding ... eight hundred thousand jobs each month ... a perfect storm ... of the word Rob millions of Americans jobs and homes ... and savings the bid worked ... a lifetime to build ... and ... it also laid bare the long erosion of middle class that for more than a decade ... instead work harder and harder just to keep up ... in fact most Americans who've known economic hardship these past several years ... don't think about the collapse of ... Lehman Brothers when they think about ... the recession ... instead they recall ... that they they ... got the gut punch of pink slip ... for the date ... the ... bank ... so for the role ... those are the stories the guided ... everything we've done ... it's what most earliest days the crisis ... caused us to act so quickly through the recovery act to rest ... the downward spiral and put a floor under the fall ... we put people to work repairing roads and bridges ... to keep teachers in our class for our first responders on the streets ... we help responsible homeowners modify their mortgages ... so that ... more of them keep their hopes ... we help jump start the flow of credit to help more small businesses ... keep their doors open ... we saved the American auto industry ... as we worked to stabilize the economy and get a growing in creating jobs again ... we also started pushing back against the trends ... have been better in the middle class for decades ... so we took on a broken healthcare system ... we invest in new American technologies to end our addiction to foreign oil ... we put in place tough rules ... on big banks ... rules that we need to finalize before the end of year by the way to make shore the job is done ... what all this means is we clear away the rubble from the financial crisis that we've begun to lay a new foundation ... for economic growth ... and prosperity ... and in our personal lives of and a lot of us ... understand that people tighten their belts shed that ... refocused on the things really matter ... all of this happened because ultimately of the resilience in the grip of the American people ... but that's not ... in the store ... as a middle-class family will tell you or anybody who is striving to get in the middle class ... we are not yet where we need to be ... and that's what we've got a focus on ... all the remaining work ... that needs to be done to strengthen this a cop ... we need to grow faster ... we need more good paying jobs ... we need more broad based prosperity we need more ladders ... of opportunity for people who are ... currently ... for about one again in the middle class ... cuz even though our businesses are trading new jobs in a broken record profits ... the top one percent ... of Americans ... to fall twenty percent of the nation's ago blaster ... well the average worker ... is saying theres all ... in fact that understates the problem most of the games have gone to the top ... one tenth of one percent ... so in many ways the trends of taken hold over the past two decades of a winner take all economy where ... if you do better and better and better ... well nobody else just treads water ... were loses ground ... those trends been made worse ... by the recession ... that's what we should be focused ... that's what folks ... that's what all the American standing beside me ... Wells all of you out there are focused on ... as Congress begins another budget debate ... that's what Congress should be focused on ... how we grow the economy faster hundred rate ... better job so we ... do we increase wages and incomes ... we ... increase ... opportunity for those of a lot of opportunity ... now to re create ... better retirement security ... that's what we should be focused on because the stakes for middle class ... everybody is fighting to get in the middle class could not be higher ...